Last week, I started work on a possible new game. An open world Space Adventure game for the Nintendo Wii U. I am giving it the code name of Space Unknown for the time being. Being that this will be my first open world game, and one that I wish to be very large in scope as well as designed to be fun, I am doing a beta to help get opinions and feedback on the game to help shape it’s direction. I would like to do weekly blog posts about my changes to the beta to help keep people up to date on it’s progress.

Right now, my main idea for the game to be an open world adventure game. As thus, I want to populate the game and make it a vast universe full of wonders. But will still need to add things to help make it interesting. Like space battles, quests, etc.

As of this post, the beta is in it’s very early stages. So there is no graphics or sound for the game, besides some colors to help distinguish the objects from each other. The Quest/Adventure part of the game is only just now being worked on, so for now you can only just mess around currently.

ZaciSa: Defense of the Crayon Dimension! is now out in Europe on the Nintendo Wii U eShop. With positive reviews and great reactions from new players, Europe’s launch has become a big success for us! Launch week was fueled with a special 50% off sale that resulted in the game outperforming the North American launch. In fact, comparing the two launches results in ZaciSa doing 73% of combined launch sales. The game did in 6 days what took 6 weeks to do in NA. I am very happy with this result so far. The game has even gone on to be featured on Wara Wara Plaza.

ZaciSa: Defense of the Crayon Dimension! is currently available for €2.99 / £2.19.

I am pleased to announce that ZaciSa: Defense of the Crayon Dimension! for the Nintendo Wii U eShop will launch in Europe, including Germany, on August 20th, 2015 for €2.99 / £2.29. To celebrate this special launch and as a way to help make up for the game being late to the European market, I am doing a special one week launch sale of €1.49 / £1.14. This Arcade style, Tower Defense game will be launching exclusively for the Nintendo Wii U.

ZaciSa: Defense of the Crayon Dimension! is a updated and improved version of ZaciSa’s Last Stand, which launched last year in North America. This updated version includes many improvements over the original North American launch version. This includes several new maps, game modes, weapons, enemies, online leaderboard, Miiverse integration, stable 60 FPS gameplay and more additions.

Features:

12 Unique Maps

Indie cross-over with indies BLOK DROP U and PING 1.5+

Four Game Modes: Hard, Easy, Insanity and Endurance.

Local & Online Leaderboards

Miiverse™ Features

Local Co-Op

Off-TV Gameplay

60FPS Gameplay

Hand Drawn Graphics

ZaciSa: Defense of the Crayon Dimension! is a simple, yet challenging, 2D tower defense game set in space. The main concept is that you have to defend your base from an onslaught of enemy ships that seek to destroy you and your way of life. To do this, you will deploy different Bot weapons, such as a Sentry or Bomber to destroy them before they get to your base. The game will start out easy enough – at least in theory – with only something small, like twenty weak enemies. Every level you survive will result in more enemies with increasing strength. You gain points and money for every ship you destroy, as well as a nice bonus at the end of each round. You use this money to not only build more Bots, but also different kind of upgrades. Can you survive the slaughter?

ZaciSa’s Last Stand is now officially 1 year old! It launched exactly 1 year ago on this date, July 3rd 2014. It has been an incredible year. Every single week of that year has been an excellent learning experience and I have learned a lot. With the 2nd patch now officially out and with a big positive reaction to it, I am looking forward to another exciting year!

Though there are no numbers associated with this chart, you can clearly get a good glimpse of how the downloads went at different points in time. Launch week was very packed with my game being 1 of 6 indie games. 2 of which were high profile games. Not to mention a big VC game as well. So as you can see, launch sales were rather lower then what I was expecting. Competition when you are unknown can be tough.

I also learned that Wii U eShop owners really love sales, and as you can see each sale gave the downloads a big spike. I also learned that the total number of game sales going on at one time will influence mine. For example, the 3rd sale (Thanksgiving till New Years) had many games on sale and resulted in fewer sales overall due to competition. On the opposite of this was the 4th sale (2 weeks mid Feb) which was the 1st $0.69 sale that got huge coverage and downloads, thanks a little due to fewer sales. The last and current sale, the 7th sale at $1.19, was during E3 and the craziness of that. During that time, there was at one point over 65 games on sale on the North American Wii U eShop. This resulted in a very crowded marketplace with little room to stand out. If you look closely at the very last week, you will see sales went up due to fewer sales.

Overall, I am quite happy with my game’s sales. It has been a very exciting ride and am looking forward to releasing even more games!